Last year, the World Rally Championship set out on a bold mission to unearth its next female star. This global talent search wasn’t purely focused on finding a driver who could perhaps one day follow in the footsteps of the great four-time WRC rally winner Michele Mouton; it was also intended to break down the barriers to entry for women in rallying.
Relatively speaking, the WRC, compared to other motorsport series, has led the way in female participation. Mouton’s run to finish runner-up in the 1982 WRC title race smashed the glass ceiling, proving women could achieve success at the very top level of motorsport. Four decades later, this level of success is yet to be replicated, but it doesn’t mean the talent isn’t out there. On the co-driver side, female participation is growing and so is the success, withReeta Hämäläinen winning the 2022 WRC2 title, while Enni Malkonen competed at the top level last year alongside Sami Pajari after claiming the 2022 WRC3 crown.
Now the WRC hopes it has found a new trailblazing woman driver. Meet Claire Schonborn — the inaugural winner of the WRC’s Beyond Rally Women’s Driver Development Programme. It’s a life-changing moment for the 25-year-old from Germany, who felt that the opportunity for a career as a rally driver was a mere pipe dream. After winning a shootout against fellow finalist Lyssia Baudet in February’s Rally Sweden, Schonborn will put a career as an automotive systems engineer to one side to become a WRC driver.
The prize afforded to her by the WRC is a fully funded programme in the Junior WRC, driving an M-Sport-built Ford Fiesta Rally3 car.
“To be honest it has not completely sunk in it at the moment, but every day I realise it a bit more,” reflects Schonborn. “It’s unbelievable, but now the hard work starts for the rest of the Junior WRC campaign. Now I have to concentrate completely on this programme because it’s such a big chance and honour to be the winner. I hope the rest of the season will be as good as Sweden.
“Without this programme I wouldn’t have had the chance to race rallies, so this was my Plan A, and without this plan I would not be able to continue. This is my whole life now and everything changes. At work I said I had to reduce my working hours and fully focus on this one big chance.”
So how did Schonborn reach this life-changing moment? The WRC’s concept to increase female participation was born last year. The programme, for which the intention is to run annually, attracted applications from across the world that were whittled down to 15 finalists: Baudet (21, Belgium), Emma Chalvin (23, France), Ann Felke (22, Germany), Joanna Hassoun (20, Lebanon), Mako Hirakawa (27, Japan), Hannah Jakobsson (20, Sweden), Suvi Jyrkiainen (24, Finland), Luz Marina Santos Ramos (18, Spain), Nuria Pons Garcia (21, Spain), Aoife Raftery (23, Ireland), Madelyn Tabor (21, USA), Alexandra Teslovan (18, Romania), Hanna Lisette Aabna (18, Estonia), Dorka Zagyva (19, Hungary) and Schonborn.
This group of drivers of varying age and experience levels and backgrounds headed to M-Sport Poland’s headquarters, where they were assessed by a panel of experts. The drivers were judged on their driving capabilities on asphalt and gravel, how they handled media interviews, pacenote making skills, physical fitness and mechanical knowledge by a panel of industry experts, which included Peter Thul (WRC Promoter sporting director), Burcu Cetinkaya (rally driver and FIA Women in Motorsport chairwoman), Pernilla Solberg (FIA WRC Commission president and former rally driver), Maciej Woda (M-Sport Poland managing director) and Isolde Holderied (1994-95 FIA female world rally champion). They assessed the candidates throughout the week before the tough decision to select three winners.
That trio – Schonborn, Baudet and Jyrkiainen — contested the Central European Rally last October driving JWRC-spec Fiesta Rally3 cars. The jury was unable to separate Schonborn and Baudet, prompting a shootout on the snow stages of Sweden. Schonborn, competing on snow for the first time, managed to edge Baudet to finish seventh in the JWRC class, 2m56.3s ahead of the Belgian. JWRC rounds in Portugal, Greece, Finland and Central Europe, where she will be competing against the world’s best junior talents, now lie in wait.
It’s clear that a passion for motorsport has fuelled Schonborn for some time. Her parents compete in hillclimbs and she followed them into the discipline, and in order to pay for her motorsport she worked as a race engineer on Porsche Carrera Cup cars at the Nurburgring 24 Hours, the Nurburgring Langstrecken Serie (NLS) and Porsche Sports Cup in Germany.
These activities were dovetailed with working as a systems engineer at ZF Friedrichshafen, which supplies technology to road car manufacturers.
“I work on the application of electrical stabilisation programmes in road cars, so it’s not an easy job as I have so many business trips, because we are testing in every country including as far away as New Zealand,” explains Schonborn. “But my company is fully behind me and they will support me as best as they can. Now I can fully focus on driving and combine what I know from being a race engineer and from my job, and can put everything together.”
Schonborn’s story does highlight that it is still incredibly challenging for women drivers to break into motorsport at the highest levels, although, in addition to her arrival in JWRC this year, WRC2 will feature an all-female crew with the renowned Iron Dames squad fielding a Citroen C3 for Sarah Rumeau and co-driver Julie Amblard, who finished fifth in the French Rally Championship last year. Schonborn believes that the programme provided by Iron Dames and her own story show that the barriers are coming down.
“It’s really expensive to be a rally driver and as a co-driver you can earn money if you do a really good job, so I think it’s easier to step in as a co-driver,” reckons Schonborn. “But I think it is getting easier [for women to drive] because there are so many programmes like the WRC programme. This is a big chance and I think that is the best way to introduce new female drivers to this sport.”
Proud to have earned the right to call herself a WRC driver, Schonborn is under no illusions about the task ahead. After the snow of Sweden, she undertakes her first gravel rally on the brutal and unforgiving roads of Portugal. A daunting prospect but, only four rallies into her career, Schonborn has already proved to be fast, determined and a quick learner.
“I’m really ambitious, so I hope that we can get faster and faster after every stage,” she reflects. “I think it will be a big challenge ahead because I have never driven on gravel before, so I have to learn a completely new tyre as well. We need to train a lot and be a bit more confident with the pacenotes as I’m a beginner. My pacenotes are a bit basic, so now we need to focus on getting more into detail. But when I’m focused on something I learn very quickly, so I’m really happy about this.
“Michele Mouton is of course the biggest hero for all the female motorsport drivers, and I hope that now is a new time for a new Michele Mouton of course, but I want to stay realistic. We will go step by step. Sarah Rumeau from the Iron Dames is also one of my heroes at the moment and I can’t wait to meet her at a WRC round. Hopefully in a few years I am also someone like them.”
